Day 153 Saveh - Qom

Ali invited us again for a wonderful breakfast. Before sending us on the road he even presented us with gifts before sending us on our way: a book of poems of Omar Khayyam for both of us (in Farsi, Arabic, English, French and German) - very very beautiful!
Once we got out of Saveh we were once again on a huge plain.
The first 20km of the ride were awful: small road, many trucks and no chance to ride on the shoulders
When we had nearly finished this hard ride a police car stopped us and 4 policemen staged a pretty surreal play: One guy says hello, asks questions and controls our passport. Another guy hands us a bag of pomegranates. Another big guy just stands around and looks dangerous. Another very young guy wants to take pictures. So we are making pictures with all possible cyclist-policemen-combinations. The young guy then tries to talk to us and just walks away with Yanniks tissues and my chocolate, hä? Finally everyone gets ready to leave and the big one kisses us goodbye on the cheeks. So, we were standing there confused having lost tissues and chocolate but having gained many pomegranates.
The rest of the ride was unspectacular - very very unspectacular. We are clearly coming closer to the desert now. Most of the time there was a big nothingness beside the road. This combined with cloudy sky was not very moodlifting - but at least there was not such bad headwind as yesterday. Once we got into Qom we stopped for a chai and were immediately approached by an english teacher who gave us excellent directions to our couchsurfing hosts address. His directions led us very close to our destination - but we still had some problems finding the address. So only several inquiries and about an hour later we arrived at a true travellers heaven. Our host Fatima and her German mother live in a big house with a spacious cellar reserved for travellers - we met Mark from the Netherlands and fellow cyclists Kimmi and Brett ( http://www.thekindnessofstrangers.net ) there. After two days of hard rides we were very happy to be welcomed at such a nice, warm, cosy place and soon went to sleep.